Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: From Novice to Professional) [Kindle Edition]

When I first started off with this book I thought I was going to be dissapointed because it was slow for the first few chapters. Having said that it's not for the novice. As I got further into the book it got better and better. The author takes a sensible approach to the use of javascript, maintaining accessability and degrading gracefully. Some of the code later on in the book is top notch. I haven't had to contact the author yet so I can't comment on the lack of support mentioned by another reviewer. The books pretty well written and I haven't had enough problems with it to warrent going to the site. As a professional java developer who has just over the past year took an interest in ajax rich client technologies I found it a thoroughly good read. The first 4/5 chapters covered knowledge it had taken me many months to amass by myself. Buy it now!

While I can sympathise with some of the 2* reviewers, I am reluctant to rate this anything less than 5*. While I myself did (and still do) struggle with this book, it's fair to say that it really does its best to get you from novice TO professional in its 480 pages.

Heilmann makes it clear that he isn't going to plod along with 'hello world' type examples and, after brief coverage of the 'core' elements of javascript (what Heilmann collectively names 'data and decisions', e.g. numbers, strings, arrays, objects and control structures), he jumps right into writing unobstrusive, progressively enhanced javascripts. In fact, barely a quarter of the way in, he is writing helper methods, that aren't fully expected to make sense yet, in order to write more efficient and cleaner scripts. All the while, he discusses such things as the role of javascript in web development, accessibility and cross-browser compatibility.

By chapter 8 we are being introduced to Ajax and by the end of the book we are given coverage of third-party javascript including the discussion on the popular javascript libraries.

I won't lie and pretend this is easy-going. It's not. But I think as a beginner that if you're willing to go with the flow and accept that not everything is going to make sense at first, and if you're prepared to write your own scripts (and accept they're not going to be as good as Heilmann's right away) you'll have here an invaluable resource. Not only does he cover a bunch of relevant examples (e.g. drop down menus, layer ads, form validation), but he does this well. When I go and write my own scripts, I never feel like i'm coming back to this book to 'look how it's done', rather it's that i'm coming back to 'see a better approach'.

Bare in mind that Heilmann ain't gonna hold your hand all the way through the book and that it does get pretty involved pretty quickly and you'll be fine. I feel I have the perfect 2 books to get me going in this and O'Reilly's 'The Definitive Guide'. This book grows increasingly invaluable to me, still a relative beginner, owing mainly to the WAYS in which Heilmann goes about javascripting. When things do get maybe a bit too heavy, he does explain what he means to do in those spots and this itself is a good starting point for writing your own (be them work-in-progress) scripts.

N.B. all code examples are available online for download to accompany this book. This is another handy facet.

Chris Heilman is clearly a man who knows Javascript inside out, however this book is let down by unclear examples and limited exposition of important features. Layout is poor and very confusing , altogether a frustrating read.